


The Mastermind's Ex

by Anonymississippi



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Bisexual Character, Crime!AU, F/F, General Danvers Week, Leverage!AU, The Two Davids Job, general danvers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-10
Updated: 2017-07-10
Packaged: 2018-11-30 04:26:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11455956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anonymississippi/pseuds/Anonymississippi
Summary: Alex and her team of cons and thieves are set to take down an evil insurance company called I.Y.S. Alex has a personal vendetta against the CEO and wants to rob him blind by sabotaging the opening of an art gallery where I.Y.S. is insuring all of the pieces on display.Unfortunately, she didn't expect her ex-wife, a renowned freelance art appraiser, to be on the job at the gallery opening as well. If they're recognized, it all goes south. Will Alex be able to pull off the biggest con of all?Tricking her brilliant ex-wife?





	The Mastermind's Ex

“Why does it have to be me again?” Winn moaned, jerking when Alex plunked the black glasses over the bridge of his nose.

It was cramped with all five of them in the van, and with Winn out wooing the mark, the rest of them were going to have to be inside on the computers. James was in the front on lookout with Kara, and Lucy was giggling in a very _unhelpful_ manner in the back. Alex double-checked the feed on the button cam, making sure she could see herself clearly through the monitor. Winn’s comm had been run through their single channel audio system, so everyone would be able to hear any info gathered from the interaction.

“Because she thinks James is the security guard and everyone else in this van already knows her,” Alex grumbled, straitening Winn’s tie with the button cam. “Okay, so, you know what we need—”

“More info on _The David’s_ transport,” Winn moaned. “Insurance figures. How much Blackpoole will put up for the second statue’s display.”

“And the stature was last rumored to be in...?” Lucy quizzed him, twirling idly around on the rollie chair in the back of their rather large strike van.

Lucy’s acting prowess sure would’ve proven useful at the moment, but Lucy’s mug-shot was known all over the fine art world. She was a grifter extraordinaire, but Alex couldn’t risk the mark recognizing Lucy in such a setting. Plus, the mark hadn’t hit on Lucy at the reception; it had been _Winn_ , out of all of them, that had caught her eye. Perhaps she found the stuttering charming.

Alex really hoped they weren’t as conspicuous as they seemed, parked over behind the loading dock in a huge black van on the street with the nice café.

Alex hoped even more so it wouldn’t be conspicuous that Winn would be climbing out the back to meet his “date.”

“Kuala Lumpur,” Winn answered confidently, circling back to Lucy’s question.

“Good.”

“Just… try to be subtle, okay?” Alex said, trying to keep her cool. She checked the monitor again and started, pushing at Winn’s shoulders to get him out the doors. “That’s her car, that’s her _car_!”

“Sorry, sorry, yeah, I’m gonna—”

“Don’t mess this up, Winn,” Alex warned him as he stepped out. “Sometimes she smiles and without even knowing it you’ve spilled your guts.”

Winn grimaced, and when he answered, his voice sounded prepubescent: “Sounds charmingly… violent?”

“Get in there,” Alex griped.

It would have been seventeen thousand times easier if anyone but Astra had landed this gig for the gallery and I.Y.S Insurance, the company insuring every piece in there—Vermeers, Chardins, even the Michelangelo. But then again, I.Y.S. was the best, and they only dealt with the best, which is why they hired Astra, the best art appraiser in the business. Trips to Milan and Tokyo and Toronto and Prague and Sydney and San Juan were the norm for Astra Inzelli, formerly Astra Dan—well, never mind.

Those kinds of trips used to be the norm for Alex, too, back when she was the lead inspector for fraud at I.Y.S. (before she got hired, and, consequently, got very drunk). That’s how she’d met Astra. That’s how they’d become a team. Every gallery owner in the business wanted Astra’s eyes on their work for authentication. In the old days, every gallery got their fair share after Alex had tracked down every lead and pulled every string, making sure the art insured by I.Y.S. was in fact, the art that it was purported to be. Astra could look at brush strokes and the drying patterns of paints and spot a forgery from ten miles away. It was a talent like no other, and Alex had loved her for it. But as oftentimes happens in lives, and in relationships, Alex fucked up. But she couldn’t let Astra’s presence take her back down that dark road.

No.

Not again.

After what Alex had gone through with her father’s death, she had bigger fish to fry than a single gallery owner. She wanted the entire insurance company ruined, and Blackpoole, their CEO, the one who had let her father _die…_ he would lose everything along with it.

But the only person in the world who could mess up this heist designed to take down Blackpoole and I.Y.S. was about to sit down to “do lunch” with Winn. If they couldn’t pass the first replica of the _David_ statue off as the real deal, there was no way their art piece would get in the gallery and then, no way for them to pull off the job that would lead to Blackpoole’s ruination.

It all hinged on Astra.

Who just so happened to be Alex’s ex-wife.

_Shit._

“Winslow!”

Alex tilted her head up toward the monitor and cringed as Astra smiled at Winn in his little art historian’s jacket-and-tie, all gussied up like he was trying to… to _impress_ her or something. Astra looked… well, it didn’t matter how amazing Astra looked, because Alex wasn’t here for that. Her team wasn’t here for that.

She had four others, beside herself. Lucy on the face-to-face cons. Winn on the keyboard, their hacker. Then there was Kara, who would go in on a rappel line and bend around laser lights to lift framed paintings around the most advanced security systems; and then there was her boyfriend, James, would punch his way through dozens of guards at a time. They all had their ways of completing jobs, and Alex’s way was to keep her cool. Keep her control.

Which she always had a damn hard time doing when Astra looked this good.

* * *

 

“It’s wonderful to see you,” Astra said warmly, leaning in to grant Winn a half hug before they took their seats at the outdoor table. It was a charming little restaurant off the town square, perfect for a first date.

Alex had to suppress a gag.

“Oh, this is gonna be good.”

“Shut up, Lucy,” Alex mumbled.

“Touchy,” Lucy commented, eyeing her critically. “Though I know why.”

“Let’s just…” Alex turned back toward the screen and hunkered down for the duration. Lucy always was the most perceptive of everyone in the group. It would hardly do to act like she’d never gotten over her ex when the entire plan hinged on duping her. “Let’s just focus on the op, okay?”

“Sure… Astra looks great, though.”

“Shut _up_ , Lucy.” 

* * *

 

“…so we’re not going to talk about art all afternoon, are we?” Alex heard Astra ask Winn after she set her drink aside, having given the menu a once over.

“Oh, uh,” Winn sputtered over the lip of his glass like an asphyxiating dolphin. “We’re… we’re not?”

“Well after the reception at the gallery the other evening, I truly wanted to see you,” Astra told him, her winsome smile never fading. “Besides, it’s all my ex-wife ever wanted to talk about. It was so tedious.”

“Well, I… I _am_ an art historian,” Winn fibbed. He fibbed well, thank god.

“Looking it up on Wikipedia doesn’t count, man,” James commented absently from directly behind Alex. He and Kara had moved round the bucket seats in front to settle in for the show, which only made Alex more uncomfortable. It was bad enough Winn and Lucy were hearing what Astra thought of her, but _Kara_ too?

She never wanted Kara to realize just how much losing Astra had hit her. After Kara’s unfortunate separation from her birth family, she’d been taken in by… well, even after Alex had started tracking down Kara, she never got the full story. Kara could practically fly through the air on rappelling line. She avoided alarms, bent backward and sideways and end-over-end to avoid lasers. She could bend and swoop and push doors open that were locked with the tightest security systems in the world. She could _steal_ , and she was super good at it.

Kara had only discovered her aunt worked in the fine art world alongside Alex by happenstance, when she’d opted to pilfer an Imperial Faberge egg instead of a case full of diamonds, simply because she could put it in her pocket. And Astra had been there, at the reception, staring Kara down as if she’d seen a ghost. And Alex had been there, at the reception, looking over the gallery pieces, flirting with Astra, but _also_ trying to catch Kara.

That night, Kara got away from Alex.

Astra didn’t.

But Alex had gone back to tracking Kara, and had done so with renewed vigor when she found out Astra’s connection to the world-renowned thief. She’d caught her once… _once_ , and then had been informed Kara had broken the handcuffs they’d put on her an hour after the arrest, and had waltzed out of the back of the federal prison van.

She was, frankly, amazing.

But also terribly, terribly awkward.

But no amount of amazing could restore what she’d lost with Astra, or what Alex had tried to salvage by tracking Kara to the ends of the earth. Family. Friendship. A _marriage_. She learned more and more about Kara, was probably the closest person Kara had in her life, if her research was any indication. But being overworked in a high-pressure job eventually got the best of Alex. It all came crashing down when I.Y.S. didn’t fund Alex's father’s treatment, and then she hit the bottle.

Nowadays, she works with hackers and thieves and con-men to rob rich, horrible people blind. If she has the chance to give back to the teenagers who lose their dads to preventable diseases, then she’s damn sure to make it happen.

Even if it means setting her ex-wife up on a (fake) date with a guy who still plays Minesweeper for fun.

Alex stared at the monitor in front of her, wishing she was in Winn’s place. Smiling. Eating lunch... like they used to do when they were in love.

“That’s true. It’s nice to have some common interests,” Astra said, placing the menu down and going for—oh hell no, was she reaching for his _hand_? On a first _date_?

Alex thought back to their first official date. Astra had touched a lot more than just her hand.

She clenched her jaw and tried to maintain some professional composure.

“I just… I wanted to thank you,” Astra continued. “I haven’t dated a lot since my marriage broke up. And to find a man who is open to dating someone—”

“—who has to travel a lot? Who’s a world renowned professional?” Winn asked.

“I was going to say bisexual, but no, uhm… thank you,” Astra looked down.

“I’m sorry to hear about your lack of… well, I’m sorry about your marriage.”

“Don’t be,” Astra huffed, bringing her wine glass up to her stupid-perfect lips. “She was reckless, controlling, obsessive.”

The atmosphere in the van grew terribly heavy. It wasn’t as if Alex didn’t know everyone was listening in. It was… well, it wasn’t great, but she was the leader of the op. She needed them to know that there were two sides to every story. Giving a rational explanation seemed like the best option.

“Adventurous,” Alex said. “She used to say I was—not reckless, but adventurous. And focused, she… she liked my focus.”

“I’ll bet she did.”

“Ew! Lucy, gross,” Kara grumbled.

Back at the table, Winn was doing his best trying to take up at least a little for Alex’s character. Alex both loved and loathed him for it.

“Well, uh, she must’ve had some good qualities, right?” he asked.

“Oh, no. Not even in bed.”

Alex whipped her head to the side and saw Lucy wincing, James staring at his lap, and Kara with her hands pressed deliberately over her ears. She felt heat rush directly to her cheeks, and face-palmed at how abysmally this recon was going.

“I mean, between women…” Astra trailed off and raised her eyebrows, shooting Winn a knowing look. “There’s a lot of give and take and with my ex… she was a little more take than… _give_.”

“Pillow Princess Alex Danvers,” Lucy snickered.

“I will _end_ you, Lucille!” Alex snapped.

“I’m dead, I’m dying, this isn’t real, this isn’t real,” Kara was chanting to herself in the back of the van. Alex just knew she was hoping against all hope that her estranged aunt hadn’t just said that about her new best friend. Because Kara had been surprisingly cool about the whole, tracking-her-to-the-ends-of-the-earth with surveillance and bullets thing, but the marrying-her-aunt thing?

Significantly less cool.

“And you know the worst thing about her?” Astra pressed, leaning in to Winn.

Everyone could hear Winn gulp through the comm.

“Is that she forgot that I gave her that button cam for Christmas three years ago,” Astra smirked triumphantly, leaning down over the table so that the camera got a wonderful shot of her cleavage. Alex had to resist the urge to cover up the monitor.

“Alexandra,” Astra purred. “You’re in trouble.”

The button cam blacked out a second after that, but the rest of the team didn’t really have a plan C. This had already been plan B to their preferred plan A, so it was… well, they’d have to redo some things... okay, several things.

The door to the van was flung open wide, and the whole crew jumped in place. Astra dropped Winn, who’d she’d been _leading by the tie_ all the way back to the van. Her eyes were dark and that vein that stood to attention whenever she was angry made its aggressive showing.

“I can explain,” Alex said, cringing, her hands raised defensively.

“You had better, Alexandra,” Astra growled, looking up to lock eyes solemnly with Kara. For a moment, there was softness, but when she turned back to Alex, only steel. “Get out here,” she commanded, and Alex swallowed, following dutifully behind.

Yeah, there would be some explaining. And yeah, Astra was going to be pissed. But maybe, just maybe… they could pull this off. Maybe Alex could—well, there was no winning Astra back, not after putting her through Alex’s drinking hell all over again, but maybe she could do something about Kara, in addition to the insurance company. Maybe she could still help Kara and Astra, even if there was little hope between herself and Astra anymore.

Maybe she could still fix _someone_ , even if it wasn’t herself.

**Author's Note:**

> yall im so sorry but i had this in my head I took it almost word for word from a leverage episode so to the 2 people i know who read my work and watch this, consider this yours.
> 
> but i also really wanted to at least hit 4/7 on general danvers week and I've got a whole three hours left on this Sunday! Made it! it's been so great to see all the new content here and on tumblr. we're so small but i'm just gonna toot our own horns--toot toot!--because we've got some fantabulous writers and artists in our fandom :D
> 
> I'd like to finish up the historical AU chapter I was writing, and get back to posting the last few chaps for brigadier's brewers within the next two or three weeks. Thanks to everyone for reading!!!


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